Another Letter I'll Never Send

This is another letter I'll never send. It's not that I don't want to send this one, it's just that it is impossible for it to be delivered.

Dear George,

On Thursday it will be two years. Three years ago I laid my bow on the strings and my fingers against the neck and my violin sang into the ceiling. Four years ago I smiled at you when I walked into the bandroom, and we told jokes and laughed and you made silly faces at people who weren't paying attention. Five years ago we were getting ready to compete in Toronto, and I had already learned a great deal from you in less than a year.

I remember the first time I met you, vividly. It was at summer music the summer between middle school and high school. I rode my bike to the middle school, to surround myself with the music program that I had dedicated myself to for four years. You were sitting there while the first violins practiced, holding your baby girl in your lap. You made me laugh so hard and I didn't even know you, but I knew we would be fast friends.

On the first day of high school I was terrified, but orchestra was an immediate home for me. Kate and I plopped ourselves down in the most comfortable chair in the bandroom and listened to you talk about the rigors of orchestra, knowing you were probably the least serious person we'd ever met. We took playing tests as freshman and sophomores, to determine our seating assignments. Kate and I were last stand first violins, a definite honor for freshman. I remember our playing exam sophomore year. When we finished you sat there with paper in front of you, pen in hand, looking at us. All you said was "And you're only sophomores." I could have cried with how good you made me feel about my abilities. I felt like I could do anything, play anything, be anything, because of you.

I went to Ireland over April vacation junior year, when the music department went on the annual music trip. That year you went to Boston, and orchestra placed second in the competition. We placed second my freshman year, and first my sophomore year. You were always so proud of us, and you always told us to ignore what the judges said, that we sounded great no matter what. And we did, we sounded like a team. If I could go back and change anything, I would have been there for the trip to Boston, so I could have spent a little more time with you. So I could have been there with my orchestra, with my team. I'm sorry, George.

You looked terrible on the night of the spring concert junior year. You had recently been told you would be taking over heading the band in addition to the orchestra. Your responsibilities were mounting and the music department budget was shrinking.

After the concert you went to the doctor, with fatigue. Nothing scary, right?

The doctor told you that you were sick. Very sick. You had leukemia.

They told us you had leukemia. I never panicked. Everyone was all over the place, terrified that you were going to die, trying to be hopeful that you would make a swift recovery. Everyone prayed. The "paper cranes" phenonmenon swept the school, and everyone wishes and hoped that you would be all right. Everyone loved you, George. You never made an enemy of the students, and you made dozens of great friends of the faculty.

You left the school to get treatment, and a less capable person filled in for you while you were gone. No one liked him, no one trusted him. He wasn't you.

The winter concert went smoothly, we sounded great, and we all played for you. We wore our blue and gold "Jammin' for George" wristbands, and all of our parents clapped and cheered for you when you sat in the front row. We played a benefit concert for your family and your expenses a few weeks later. Your eyes were deep and sunken, your formerly bald and shiny head was even balder. Your skin lacked its natural healthy glow. You were so skinny. You stood to conduct us for one song at the winter concert, but that was all you could handle. We cried so hard during that song. I turned to one of my friends, tears streaming down my face, and asked her if this was the last time we would be conducted by you. She told me not to say that, that it would be okay.

They told us you weren't coming back to teach us. They told us you were dying. They had ever single counselor in the band room, every single available staff member on hand. Tears streamed down my hot cheeks as I heard the words traveling out of their mouths and into my ears. You were dying. We finally had confirmation of our worst fears. You were dying.

I went into the practice room area and fell against a wall. Kate caught me and held me while I wept bitterly. It was the first time I ever really cried. I never cried when my father died, never really cried anyway. I feel, in a lot of ways, like your death was a continuation of my father's death. Like cancer was killing all of the important men in my life. It was a great release of emotion, of all the pent of rage and sadness from my father's death and all the feelings I had over you, George.

On February 5, 2007 I was sitting in second period cafe study, my books piled in front of me on a cafeteria table just high enough that I could rest my tired head. The principal's voice mumbled over the intercom that, after a long and hard fought battle against leukemia, you died. I felt like the battle that we had all been fighting was lost, like what was the use of any of it? It was the first time in my life that I realised that love isn't enough. Love isn't enough to keep someone in your life, it's not enough to keep friends from fighting, lovers from leaving, fathers and mothers and friends and teachers from dying. Everything I thought I knew was gone.

And so you died. I left cafe study and wandered down the long hallways to the music wing. I found Kate in the hallway, dropped my books and grabbed her in my arms. The teachers quickly ushered us to the music wing where we hugged and cried. I couldn't even stand to see how devastated we all were. I went home and lay in my bed for hours, just crying and wondering.

The violin felt different in my hand after that. The strings didn't have to same pang as before. My heart was completely broken. Love wasn't enough to keep you alive, George. It just wasn't enough.

And so you've been dead for two years now, and I miss you as much as I did a year ago, and two years ago, and as much as I will miss you three, ten, twenty years from now. The pain never goes away, it sometimes changes and sometimes it gets easier to get through the day without crying, but it never goes away. Sometimes I remember your smile, your laugh (you had such an amazing laugh!), your bald head, the love I know you felt for your students and music, and I cry. I'm not crying for me George, and maybe I'm not even crying because I'm sad. I cry because I knew you, and you touched my life. I've known many angels in my short experience here on Earth, and you George were certainly one of them. I cry because I'm so grateful, so very thankful that I knew you and that my life will never be the same.

If you see my daddy, play him a song for me. But NOT Duffy's Cut :) Play something happy and full of life. When I play my violin, run my fingers over the strings and grip the bow loosely, I see you on the pages in front of my eyes. I see my father, who never got to hear me play. I'm playing for you, George, and my daddy, and me. Put in a good word for me.

God, I miss you so much.

Yuck

I haven't blogged in a little while, not because there has been nothing to blog about but because I've been bogged down with school work, meetings, club work, etc. The only reason I am able to blog today is because I have the flu, and I'm spending the day in bed with my laptop, my cell phone and my television. The last time I had the flu I was nine years old, it was the winter after my father died and all I remember was laying down on the couch and not being able to get back up for a week.

Yesterday morning I woke up to a snow day, and an illness. All day I was mopey and headachey and then just achey and tired. I came back to my dorm after dinner and did homework, and then Hillary came over when I was finished and rubbed my back and told me that I was on fire, even though I was absolutely freezing. I've never experienced such chills before in my life. So my roommate and Hillary put me under the covers and stocked the fridge with water and made sure I had water and tissues next to me. Al gave me her flannel blanket for my feet and Hillary got me nyquil and sudafed (for the morning) and I conked out sometime around 11. I've never had nyquil before and it was a very trippy experience. It might have been interacting strangely with the other medicine I take for asthma and allergies, or I might have just been tripping out on nyquil in a flu induced delirium.

Lacrosse was supposed to start last night but as a result of the weather the kick off was postponed until tonight. I wouldn't have been able to play yesterday, and I certainly won't be able to play today. I can barely walk, much less run or hold a lacrosse stick.

School has been going well, other than this recent illness. I dropped psychopathology, which has already made my life much easier and my time much more manageable. It seemed like it would be a great class, but I can take it at some other point and I really need to not go insane this semester.

I recently got the paperwork and I am applying to study abroad in London fall semester '09. I'm very excited and hope that I get to go.

I'm a little too under the weather right now to add much more, but I do hope that all is well with everyone reading this and I'll try to get back on a regular blogging schedule as soon as I can. Times are chaotic right now because the semester just began and I haven't quite gotten back into the swing of things (and I lead a somewhat crazy life) but I'll be back for good eventually.

Inauguration Day

I'm back at school, glad to be back, but I think the events of today take precedence over anything going on in my personal life.

It's really cool, I think, that a nation can come together to celebrate the entrance of a new leader, and the departure of an old leader. As much as any of us may disdain George W Bush, I think it's fair to say that he did lead us through a great deal of tragedy and turmoil. Though he has more or less left us high and dry and in an economic downward spiral, he led us and we are wiser for it, I would say.

God bless the Obamas and the Bidens, let today go off without a hitch. God bless and protect our great nation.

Definitely a sign of hope. Great things to come I think.

The Best Days of Our Lives

On Friday we piled into Jaimes car and headed on the two hour journey from Connecticut to Boston, complete with sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, and scrabble. I can't do a step by step of what happened, because although it would be thoroughly entertaining, it would be about a year long. So, I'm going to highlight some of the most hilarious things that occured on this little trip to Boston.

Kate and Molly sat in the back seat, while Jaime drove and I sat in the passenger seat (because I'm the coolest and I always get shotty). As soon as Jaime started driving, the two in the back whipped out scrabble, not travel scrabble but legit scrabble, and proceeded to open the board, distribute seven letters each, and play. It was just... too funny for words. Every time Jaime changed lanes or tapped the brakes the pieces slid all over the place.

We went to Barnes and Noble near the Pru and I went to get a cup of tea at the coffee shop in the store. The chick behind the counter told me I could get a discount if I used my B&N card, which I didn't have on me, so I asked if she could look up my card. So she looked it up by phone number, but she didn't use the area code so obviously it wasn't going to work (freakin dumb) and then she tried my email address. I told her the address, and "at cox dot net" and she looked at me with a super perplexed face and said "How do you spell cox?"

*cue laughter*

She turned so many shades of red when I said it was spelt c-o-x and she was like "uh uh uh we don't have it on record uh uh uh sorry uh uh uh I don't know of any other way you would spell cox." It was so funny.

There was a woman in the science museum who looked exactly like Kate (Kate is super Asian), like exactly like her. They could have been twins, it was actually kind of scary. We were all wandering around in different places and I guess Jaime went up to this woman, thinking it was Kate, and started talking to her. The woman looked at Jaime like she had three heads and Jaime was like "Oh.. you're not Kate." Too funny.

They have a part of the x-ray exhibit at the science museum where you feel boobs to see if you can find the lump. Like... you feel these anatomically accurate boobs. The science museum was awesome.

There were baby chicks in one of the exhibits, and eggs that were hatching! It was beautiful and I definitely was tempted to steal some of the chicks cause they were adorable.

Kate couldn't reach the handrails on the T so she had to hold on to Natasha, and after that we referred to Kate as abuela (actually we called her al-bu-la in reference to the fact that my mother, everybodys favourite of course, can't pronounce abuela and it's funnier that way) and walked around Boston saying "Grandma you're gonna be late for mah-jong!" It makes me weepy with giggles just thinking about how much of a ruckus we cause everywhere we go.

Those girls are the greatest. Sleeping on Natasha's floor wasn't even that bad, it was actually the most comfortable floor I've ever slept on before, and I was surrounded by my best friends in the whole world. We stayed up until four am reminisching about the past... fourteenish years we've shared together. I hadn't forgotten what a big part of my life these girls are, I just needed to be reminded. I never realised how much of my life I've shared with them, how many memories we have together. I really love them a lot, and I miss them when I'm at school. But our relationships with one and other are changing and it's okay, as scary as it is it's okay. We won't always be able to drop everything and go on roadtrips, or pile into cars and visit each other wherever we are in this country or this world. Someday soon we'll have families, and real jobs, and real responsibilities.

It's wonderful, for now, to be able to be with them, and to be reminded of how important we are to each other.

Ahh!

Help! I have fallen off the blogging bandwagon and I cannot get back up!

Being at home is not at all conducive to blogging, or doing much of anything really, because... well... nothing happens. Talk to me in a week when I've been at school for four days and I'm already ready to throw myself out my window (luckily on the first floor).

I decided that I need to cut back somewhere this semester, because although I do well academically, and I survive, college should not be about surviving but about living. Since I was at my wits end last semester, and I'm adding in somewhere in the neighbourhood of three activities this semester, something needs to be modified.

I'm telling my coach that I can't commit to lacrosse this season. Lacrosse is already on my resume for grad school. He already knows that I'm a double major in the honors program with something like 3 scholarships that I need a good GPA in order to maintain. So I'm going to be straight up with him: I'll make it to practices that I can make it to, I'll make it to every single game, but I can't commit 100%...

I'm trying to get myself psyched up for this conversation but it's totally not going to work at all. I'm super tough in my head... but in real life I'm a push over. Oh well.

And I'm dropping psychopathology, that leaves me with four courses and instrumental (which, amazingly enough, I am getting a credit for, this semester, after four....). I'm in a state of bliss just thinking about it... four courses... it's like a dream come true. This will be the first time that I'm taking four courses... I feel like such a rebel.

I've been "solicited" so to speak by my school to work at a Boys and Girls club in the city, by work I mean volunteer. I'm so excited, and so ready to do this. I feel like it makes more season for me to commit to this program than to commit to lacrosse again because I want to work with kids in my profession, and this will put me working with kids, potentially making an impact, bettering their lives and mine. It's very exciting, and next to impossible for me to juggle volunteering and lacrosse.

And working, I still have a job that requires that I tutor other students, and it's a big responsibility when you are more or less the deciding factor between an A and a B, passing a course or failing a course. And I am expected to do well in the four classes that I am retaining. And I have a life, I like to go out, and I barely went in to Boston at all last semester because I didn't have the time. I am going to stop letting everyone else run my life and start running it for myself. I am doing the things that I want to do, and no one is going to get in my way.

It feels good to think that, let's see if I will actually be able to do it.

This time next week I'll probably be taking five courses and instrumental, volunteering and doing lacrosse, working and maintaining a 3.5, knowing me.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I grow a spine between now and when I go back to school on Monday :-P

Prayer Request

Two years ago if you had asked me how I felt about outsourcing I would have told you exactly what was in my head: it sucks, it shouldn't happen, and American jobs should stay in the hands of Americans. I, like most Americans, felt anger and betrayal when I thought of the American coporations eliminating hard-earned American jobs and handing them to foreign coporations and individuals who would do the job for less. I felt the fear when I thought on the direction of our country, of the future of my family, whether I would be able to go to college, if I should even bother.

Thankfully, my mother's job was never eliminated and it likely never will be. Many of her friends, however, found themselves jobless, replaced by a new coporation headquartered in India. The new company shipped many of their offshore employees onshore, to work side by side with the company that has employed my mother for the last... nearing thirty five years now. No one was pleased, and many of the people my mother has worked with for years showed their true colours when young people with a different complexion, a different accent, and a different background, walked through the revolving doors of their office building. Some searched for different employment, others ignored the newcomers, and others were truly ugly and hateful human beings, welcoming these young people to this strange new country with dirty looks, sneers, inordinate workloads and never a helping hand.

When my mother found Naveen and Sara, I was just getting ready to leave for college. They would come over to the house and cook with my mother, they taught her how to cook Indian food (and how to cook it well!), they watched movies with her, gave her books to read. They went shopping with her, asked her to bring them to their apartments when it was too rainy to take the bus, went for walks with her by the river in the spring and summer, held her arm when she needed help going up a curb, laughed at her jokes, talked to her when she was lonely. They were always there for her, even though America had been so cruel to them, so unwelcoming. Naveen's mother and father call my mother his "auntie," and she has a place beside his family at his wedding in India (as soon as they decide who his bride is... a story for another day). Sara's boyfriend (also a story for another day) in Texas sent my mother a coupon for a huge turkey over Thanksgiving, and emailed my mother, Naveen and I his gratitude for taking care of Sara when he couldn't be here for her. Sara and Naveen are like siblings to me. They are far from home and they don't have any family here to hug them when they are scared, to tell them jokes, to reassure them when work has been unbearable.

My view on outsourcing changed drastically as I got to know Sara and Naveen. They are people too, just here trying to do their jobs. They were sent here by their employers, and if they had refused they would have been without employment. They don't want to raise their families in India, they want to stay here and live and work and just live. They love this country, despite all of the trials her people put them through.

We took Naveen with us to Washington over Thanksgiving. I sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with him, looking out over the reflecting pool, the WWII Memorial, and the Capital Building, and told him about a country ripped in two not too long ago by a disagreement over the value of a man. I told him about a nation that would send its babies off the war, to kill more babies in a country no one had ever even heard of, as I ran my fingers over the names of the friends of my parents on the Vietnam Wall. We stood in front of the White House and discussed the irony of the homeless people not 1,000 feet away from the most powerful man in the free world. I told him of the millions of people who died in a war much too recent, for no reason other than their faiths, their backgrounds, the people they loved. He had never even heard of the Holocaust, he didn't know that slaves were used in this country based solely on the colour of their skin, he didn't know about our Revolutionary War. He knew nothing about our country, or about the history of Western Civilization at all, but he is learning, and he is eager to learn.

If he is going to live in this country, and raise a family here, he needs to know about the United States and at least the important events in our history.

Sara went back to India over the summer and was transfered to work in Texas so she could live with her boyfriend.

We just found out last night that Naveen's visa will not be renewed, and he has a week to leave the country.

I held my mother in the kitchen while she wept, while she repeated "I'm loosing all three of you" over and over, sobbing. It's hard to not be steaming mad when you have to hold your mother in your arms because you're afraid she'll topple over from a broken heart. It's hard to not want someone to pay, it's hard to not want to be able to make everything right, so so badly. To be able to tell her that he can stay, that he can be her adopted son, as he has become, that he will still be here when I go back, that his life will be all right and nothing will be scary anymore.

But I can't tell her that. INS isn't renewing visas these days because of the outcry against outsourcing, from people like the person I was two years ago. Naveen is a hard worker, who deserves a chance to make his life better, just like my ancestors got when they left the slums of Dublin and the pastures of Poland and boarded ships bound for a strange land they had heard whispers of, promises of a better future for their babies and themselves. He is a hard worker, and a good man, and he deserves to be able to stay in this country, if only for as long as he is needed on shore. His employers are fighting to keep him on shore, because there is work only he can do.

I'm praying he stays on shore, if only for a little while longer, just long enough for them to figure out what we can do to keep him here indefinitely. I love Naveen because my mother loves him like a son, and anyone who my mother loves like a son or a daughter is a brother or a sister to me. The colour of his skin doesn't matter, his accent doesn't matter, his birth doesn't matter. He is my brother, he is my friend. We share this world, we share this country, we share this state, we share this woman who loves us and cares about us. I will do anything and everything to make sure he stays here, and lives a long and happy life in this country.

Sometimes the people of this country infuriate me. If you can see where I am coming from, and I hope you can, please pray that Naveen's visa is extended and he isn't put on the next flight to India from JFK. And if that can't happen, please pray that I can figure out how to heal my mother's breaking heart.

Running

I don't like to run very much (which makes me wonder why I love lacrosse so much, you never stop running in that sport), but I like to work out, ride the bike for half an hour, do the rowing machine, leg presses and lifting. I get very stressed out when I'm home because I don't have a gym readily accessible, I have nowhere to just escape to. Sure I escape in my music, but it's so much easier to be physically active and release your energy that way than to release it through music. (I'm on a sort of... creative hiatus, so to speak. It hurts to be creative, more than helps. I have been in a funk when it comes to music ever since George died almost two years ago. Just something not right about the feel of the bow on those strings or the low cries of the violin these days). So I run up and down the stairs, do leg lifts and crunches and push ups until I can't do any more. The gym is a place where I can escape for an hour or so a day at school. There's no school work, no distractions, just sweat and my ipod and breathing in and out.

I feel like I've been running a lot lately, and I'm pretty exhausted from it all. I'm running from how afraid I am of the future, of even what tomorrow will bring. I had this, this really weird epiphany. I'm so close to the future that I've always wanted. Maybe not so close, but close none the less. Closer than I was a year ago, two years ago, a decade ago. I didn't even know where I was going with my life a year ago, and I might not still, but I have a better idea now and I'm so on the right track and I'm going to get there and it just feels so... scary. I'm scared because it's all going to happen, it has to happen and I believe in it.

I run from responsibility a lot, as much as I might like to deny that, I do. Sure, I take responsibility for my actions, but if I don't have to act, I won't. There has never been a driving force in my life before telling me that I have to do something or else my dreams won't come true (never might be too strong of a word there, after all there is always that driving force telling you to inhale and exhale or else your dreams will certainly not come true).

It's not just running from responsibility. It's running to keep going, to get to the next square. Going through the motions and then some, only resting when fatigue sets in and then running more. It gets exhausting after a while. Hours of classes, hours of work and papers, meals only when readily available and next to free, tea and cheap wine, lacrosse, work for five or six hours every week, volunteering when they need me, running clubs, giving giving giving and never receiving. It's why I love Hillary so much, I think, because finally after all these years of giving to my education, to my friends, to my family, to work and music and sports and life in general, there is another human being out there who doesn't need to be in my life, but who chooses to be there, and who loves me and wants my happiness and has a vested interest in my being sane at the end of each day. I don't feel like I have to run when I'm with her, I feel safe from the past, present and future. The grade police aren't going to get me, my coach isn't going to hunt me down and make me run suicides, I won't have to play my violin in a concert that truly doesn't need me, I don't need to do anything or be anyone who I'm not. I can just be me.

The future is such a scary place sometimes. But I'm so looking forward to getting there, and being able to stop running from all the things that have forced me on this treadmill all my life. Someday, I'm going to graduate from college, go to graduate school, get my masters in clinical psychology, get into a doctoral program and get my PhD, and until then I am work and live and be happy and healthy and keep running because I can almost taste the sweetness of accomplishment. I'm at the edge of something big here, and some day all of my dreams are going to come true and maybe then I can finally stop running and rest.